Perth heat melts the internet

Extreme hot weather in Perth sent the internet into meltdown on Monday night.

Thousands of iiNet customers across Australia found themselves offline for about six-and-a-half hours after the company shut down some of its systems at its Perth data centre at about 4.30pm AEDST because of high temperatures, topping 44.4C.

Customers trying to re-authenticate after disconnecting from the internet were also unable to reconnect.

Some iiNet call centres were also closed due to issues with staff access.

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"Due to record breaking temperatures in our Perth data centre earlier today, we shut down our servers as a precautionary measure," an iiNet spokesman said late Monday night. "Although redundancy plans ensured over 98 per cent of customers remained unaffected, some customers experienced issues reconnecting to the internet. These issues have now been resolved."

Users in Western Australia, NSW, Victoria and South Australia took to Twitter, Facebook and broadband forum Whirlpool to post their frustrations to the country's second largest DSL internet service provider.